NGOs warn that Hong Kong Convention requirements fall short of ensuring ethical, safe and environmentally sound ship recycling and risk undermining existing laws and efforts to reform the sector’s dangerous and polluting practices.
According to NGO Shipbreaking Platform, NGOs world-wide, the UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights, the Centre for International Environmental Law and the European Parliament have all exposed the fatal weakness of the Hong Kong Convention’s standards and enforcement mechanisms.
Many parts of the industry may have celebrated the historic entrance of he Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (the Hong Kong Convention) into force.
However, with its failure to outline robust environmental and social standards for the sound management of the many toxic substances contained in end-of-life ships, the Hong Kong Convention falls short of the Basel Convention and the more recent EU Ship Recycling Regulation, Shipbreaking Platform notes.
This is not a proud moment for IMO. It has been a fourteen years’ wait for a convention that does not solve the problems it was supposed to address.
… said Sigurd Enge, Senior Advisor, Bellona Foundation
He also mentioned that the Hong Kong Convention is already adopted by the sub-standard yards on the beaches in India and Bangladesh, so in practice, there will be no change, just ‘bad business as usual’.
As per NGO Shipbreaking Platform, the Convention possesses the following shortcomings:
- It sets no requirements, beyond compliance with national rules for the management of hazardous wastes downstream.
- It endorses beaching, a practice long associated with pollution and health hazards for both workers and local communities.
- It lacks provisions to protect workers engaged in shipbreaking operations, who often face precarious work environments, lack of protective equipment and limited access to medical facilities.
- Many beaching yards boast that they already comply with the Hong Kong Convention, but independent audits of these facilities by the European Commission have identified several serious problems that disqualify them from the EU List of approved ship recycling facilities.
- The responsibility for its enforcement is only put on the end-of-life vessel’s flag state and the recycling state.
- Beaching yards in India and Bangladesh that already claim they comply with the Hong Kong Convention but the costs related to managing hazardous materials safely, including residue oils, asbestos and mercury, are not factored in. Instead the costs are born by workers, local communities and sensitive coastal environments.
It will only serve the interests of shipping companies to avoid paying the true cost of sustainable and ethical recycling and undercut efforts to level the playing field for responsible ship recyclers to compete.
… said Ingvild Jenssen, Executive Director and Founder, NGO Shipbreaking Platform
The UNEP Basel Convention
The majority of the 191 countries party to the UNEP Basel Convention, which controls the global trade of hazardous wastes, including end-of-life ships, and bans the export of toxic wastes from OECD to non-OECD countries, found that the Hong Kong Convention fails to provide an equivalent level of control to the Basel Convention as it does not prevent the dumping of toxic ships in developing countries, Shipbreaking Platform informs.
According to Jim Puckett, Executive Director, Basel Action Network (BAN), the costs for sustainable ship recycling need to be internalised with the shipping sector. In addition, urgent support is needed to build capacity that meets industry best practice is necessary to manage the many vessels that will head for scrapping in the next years in a way that does not put workers, local communities and fragile ecosystems at risk.
Consequences
The harms caused include toxic exposure and loss of lives, limbs, livelihoods and biodiversity. Ship owners pay neither to prevent this harm in the first place, nor to compensate for or mitigate it, Shipbreaking Platform explained.
Externalising costs in this manner renders disposal of end-of-life ships artificially cheap resulting also in less economic incentive to design out toxic materials in the first place, the NGO concludes.
We will be calling for changes so that it meets expectations of environmental justice, labour rights and circular economy objectives, and calling on the European Union and responsible ship owners to ensure that the shipping sector does not get away.
… said Rizwana Hasan, Director, Bangladesh Environmental Law Association (BELA)
